


we lay whole nights, open, in the lamplight

by joshllyman



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Multi, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Pillow Talk, Polyamory, bokuto is asleep for most of this fic and wakes up just long enough to be really fucking cute, emphasis on kuroaka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27664463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshllyman/pseuds/joshllyman
Summary: The light from the television reflects on Tetsurou’s skin, illuminating the smile he sends in Keiji’s direction. Across Koutarou’s chest, Keiji reaches out and takes Tetsurou’s hand. It sends a thrill down his spine when Tetsurou laces their fingers together.-Koutarou works hard to make Tetsurou's birthday special, but it's the little things that take it from great to perfect.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou/Kuroo Tetsurou
Comments: 16
Kudos: 106





	we lay whole nights, open, in the lamplight

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this post](https://twitter.com/hqpoet/status/1329218625002233856?s=20) from the hqpoetrybot
> 
> Happy birthday Tetsu, sorry I'm a bit late

Koutarou had been the one to insist on the sleepover, despite it being a school night for Keiji and Tetsurou's having an early class. It was their first birthday as them (even though they've been them as long as they've known each other, they've been  _ them _ for only just over a month, and they're still reveling in the difference). He'd bought all of Tetsurou’s favorite snacks and kicked his roommate out of the apartment for the night so he could build a pillow fort in the middle of his living room. Tetsurou had cried, even if he denied it the moment his eyes dried up. 

“Do you think he likes it?” Koutarou had whispered frantically to Keiji when Tetsurou got up to use the restroom.

Keiji had cupped Koutarou’s cheek fondly. “I think he loves it. You did well, Koutarou.”

Koutarou had beamed.

But now he’s the one asleep in the middle of the fort, one arm curled around each of them, just halfway through  _ Into the Spiderverse _ . 

“He had a hard practice today,” Tetsurou whispers.

Keiji reaches for the remote and pauses the television. Of course they’ve all seen the movie twenty times by now, but Koutarou will be upset tomorrow if he realizes he missed the ending. 

“I think it was the sugar rush and subsequent crash,” Keiji says. “But the practice didn’t help.”

The light from the television reflects on Tetsurou’s skin, illuminating the smile he sends in Keiji’s direction. Across Koutarou’s chest, Keiji reaches out and takes Tetsurou’s hand. It sends a thrill down his spine when Tetsurou laces their fingers together.

He hadn’t intended to fall in love with Tetsurou. Falling in love with Koutarou had been easy, like laughing at a good joke, like face-planting into bed after an especially hard practice, like taking a big jump and cannonballing into the deep end of the pool. But falling in love with Tetsurou was hard. They nearly hadn’t gotten along at first, had only come to an understanding because they were both too stubborn to give up time with Koutarou. Keiji had called it Stockholm Syndrome the first time he’d genuinely laughed at one of Tetsurou’s stupid puns. It had happened in bits and pieces, like the Saturday morning where Tetsurou had brought over a bag of snacks intended only for Keiji, the kind he knew Koutarou wouldn’t eat, or the night after Fukurodani had lost Nationals and Tetsurou had driven to Keiji’s house first, to pick him up and give him the chance to cry before seeing Koutarou, so they could both be strong for him. That had been the first night Keiji had put a name to the feeling brimming just under the surface, the buzzing in his head that happened any time he thought of Tetsurou.

"What are you thinking about?" Tetsurou asks, his thumb running over Keiji's knuckles.

Keiji blinks out of his reverie. "Sorry?"

"You've got your thinking face on."

"And what does my thinking face look like?" Keiji questions.

Tetsurou's face scrunches up, his brows furrowing and his lips turning down into a frown. He looks comical, exaggerated in all the worst ways.

"I don't look like that," Keiji says, frowning.

Tetsurou giggles. "You're doing it literally right now."

Keiji huffs and pulls up the camera on his phone, examining himself in the screen. He doesn't look nearly as ridiculous as Tetsurou, but his partner does have a point, he supposes. He tosses his phone aside.

"It looks better on my face than on yours," he says petulantly, and Tetsurou has to slap a hand over his mouth to cover his answering laughter. 

Koutarou hums and turns over, stealing his arm out from under Keiji and throwing it over Tetsurou’s stomach heavily. Tetsurou lets out a grunt.

“Big fuckin’ teddy bear,” Tetsurou grumbles, but there’s a fond smile on his face as he reaches down to thread his fingers through Koutarou’s hair. 

Keiji takes the opportunity to sit up and draw his knees in against his chest. When he looks down at Tetsurou, his eyes are half-lidded, drooping as he leans into Koutarou’s cuddle.

“You don’t have to fight sleep, you know,” Keiji says, resting his chin on one of his bony knees. “Turning twenty must be exhausting.”

“Fuck you,” Tetsurou says around a yawn. “I’m fine.”

Keiji huffs. His boyfriends can be so stubborn when they want to. “You  _ do  _ have an early class.”

“And I have a boyfriend I haven’t seen for more than an hour or two at a time in weeks,” Tetsurou retorts, his voice rising just a hair. When Keiji glances his way again, his mouth is set in a stubborn frown. “I’ve missed you, Keiji. Let me have this time with you.”

Keiji feels winded as emotions surge within. Annoyance, affection, and something that feels a lot like love crest in his chest, threatening to fill his lungs with their deadweight.

“Okay,” he mutters, fighting them all back down.

Tetsurou deflates rapidly, a balloon whose air has been forced out. He’d clearly been expecting more of a fight. “Well, good,” he says, mostly to himself. 

“Suppose I should talk to keep you up, then,” Keiji suggests as Tetsurou yawns again.

“Probably couldn’t hurt,” Tetsurou admits. “Tell me about practice. How’s whipping your kouhai into shape going?”

Keiji chuckles. “We always talk volleyball.”

“Something else, then,” Tetsurou says. “Anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

Emotions clamor to the surface again. Keiji closes his eyes and opens his mouth. From his lips spill an avalanche of words. They’re meaningless at first, stupid stories about his classmates’ troublesome behavior, the time Koutarou had gotten his thumb stuck in a bottle--somehow Tetsurou had never heard that one--, the little things he does to get ready in the mornings because, for some reason, Tetsurou asked specifically about them.

And then, somewhere between the discussion of their favorite movies as children and their preferred types of onigiri, meaning, value,  _ weight _ all slip back into his words. He tells Tetsurou about the time his parents forgot him on their beach vacation, about the hours he stood, looking out at the ocean and wondering if he’d be alone the rest of his life. He recalls the first moment he realized that his heart could beat for more than just a different gender, and the first moment he realized it could beat for more than one person at once. As Koutarou snores, Keiji lets silent tears fall stream down his face and tells Tetsurou he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to tell his parents what he and Koutarou mean to him.

“No one’s asking you to,” Tetsurou assures him. “You don’t have to tell anyone at all, if you don’t want.”

“That’s the thing,” Keiji says, impatiently rubbing at his eyes. “I want to tell everyone. I want to shout it from the rooftops. You’re mine, and I’m yours, and this is the first place I’ve ever really belonged.”

Tetsurou doesn’t answer that, not in words. What he does is sit up, gently wrapping Koutarou’s arms around a pillow to give him something to hold in lieu of Tetsurou’s body, and scoot back into the couch. When he opens his arms, Keiji knows he has no choice but to crawl over to him, let himself be held. He sits sideways, leaning his shoulder into Tetsurou’s chest. Tetsurou’s arms slip around his waist, his thumb hooking in the waistband of Keiji’s pajama bottoms so his hands don’t slip.

“I really know how to bring down the mood, don’t I,” Keiji mumbles scathingly.

Tetsurou presses a kiss to the side of his head. “I don’t mind.”

“It’s your birthday,” Keiji retorts. “We should be celebrating.”

“Who says I’m not?” Tetsurou’s nose presses into his cheek. “I’m celebrating us. We’re here, and we’re together. We’ve survived everything we’ve had to deal with for the last eighteen to twenty years, and now we never have to face our problems alone ever again. Seems like something worth celebrating to me.”

Keiji sighs. That unnamed feeling threatens to name itself, to tear itself from his lips. He purses them together.

“Yes,” he agrees. “I suppose it is.”

“We can talk about something happier,” Tetsurou suggests. 

Keiji shakes his head. “I think I’m all out of words.”

“Then I’ll take over for you.”

Tetsurou tells him of growing up next door to Kenma, of the friendship that’s brought them through the years. Of discovering his love for volleyball, of meeting Koutarou for the first time, of the hurried kisses they exchanged at the first training camp they ever shared, of not being able to look at each other for days afterward. Of thinking maybe he’d lost Koutarou altogether when Keiji came along, and of the moment he knew he’d never have to lose Koutarou as long as Koutarou had something to do with it.

The television blinks off, and Keiji lifts his head. The little red numbers on the clock on the bookshelf tell him it’s just past three in the morning.

“Keizhi?” comes a slur from the lump in the middle of the fort. “Tessu? Where’d you go?”

“Right here,” Tetsurou says, reaching out a foot and poking at Koutarou’s head. His hair flattens beneath Tetsurou’s toes.

After a long delay, Koutarou knocks Tetsurou’s foot away. He lifts his head and wipes his eyes, looking up at the two of them. “Did the movie end?”

“We paused it for you,” Keiji tells him. “We can finish it this weekend.”

“Oh.” He tilts his head. “Why you over there?”

“Didn’t wanna wake you up, you sleepy owl,” Tetsurou says. 

Koutarou huffs. “Come back and let me snuggle you.”

Keiji lets himself revel in Tetsurou’s embrace a moment longer, pressing himself into his partner just a bit harder. Tetsurou kisses his cheek.

“Gimme some,” Koutarou insists.

Keiji shakes his head as he crawls back over to Koutarou, spooning him from behind and burying his nose in his neck. Tetsurou lays in front of him, taking Koutarou’s hand and kissing his palm.

“S’good,” Koutarou sighs as his eyes fall closed again. “You guys are good. Happy you’re here. ‘M so lucky.”

“You’re babbling, Kou,” Tetsurou says, and although Keiji can hear the exasperation behind it, there’s a mountain of fondness there, too. 

“Mmhmm,” Koutarou agrees. “Babbling.”

“Go back to sleep,” Keiji whispers. He kisses Koutarou’s neck. “We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Koutarou doesn’t say anything aloud, but his hips wiggle and he squirms back into Keiji’s embrace. 

He’s snoring a moment later.

“We should sleep, too,” Tetsurou whispers, as quietly as he can manage. “You have to be up in like, three hours.”

“So do you.”

“That’s what coffee’s for.” He shuts his eyes.

Keiji follows suit, but he still feels like he’s leaving something left unsaid. Something important, something worthwhile. He rolls different variations and thoughts over in his mind for several minutes before Tetsurou interrupts his thoughts.

“Thank you for tonight,” he says. When Keiji opens his eyes again, Tetsurou’s gazing hard at him. He opens and shuts his mouth a few times, and Keiji wonders if that feeling is as prevalent for Tetsurou as it is for Keiji himself. Finally he says, “I like listening to you.”

For some reason, Keiji blushes. He’s glad it’s not visible in the dark. “I like listening to you, too,” he mumbles. “Happy birthday, Tetsurou.”

Tetsurou sighs and closes his eyes. “Yeah. It really is.”

**Author's Note:**

> [socials here](https://joshllyman.carrd.co)


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